Rufus is great and I still keep a copy around, but I haven't gone back since I found Ventoy. You just run Ventoy on your stick, and then drag and drop any and all bootable ISOs into it. When you boot it, you get a list of all the ISOs to work with.

The only caveat is that you absolutely have to eject the USB, or else Ventoy probably will corrupt. That's a small price to pay to have Arch, Mint, Fedora, NixOS, and Win11 all on one OS ISO toolkit drive, plus I always eject my drives as a rule of thumb. Then all I have to do is update them every couple months.

Install the IoT version, that comes without any of the bloat and works just fine. Not even the Microsoft store is bundled in.

I have to assume so since other versions that have been "activated" the same way do. Real big shout out to you-know-who, btw. They make Microsoft software viable at all.

What?! I'm still working on my spreadsheet comparing 7 and 8!

I have heard about the IoT version. I'd have to look more into it, but I doubt I'm going back now that I've learned so much about Linux. I can troubleshoot most of Arch without touching the docs or asking online now, so it really defeats the purpose of switching back.

I also enjoy putting in a little effort to get things working. That's the thing about Linux. Most people that daily drive it get a dopamine release from tinkering with it and fixing things, and I'm one of those people.

I know there has been a big "its for everyone" push these days, but its really not. So I'm glad the IoT version exists for those that want or need it.

I downvoted it.

For starters I've seen this exact post a few times over the past 3 months in this community.

Secondly, the comments go exactly the same in these threads:

1. "linux can do everything, no faults at all, windows sucks"
2. "but I use windows for x and y and linux can't do it"
3. "how dare you insult linux, you should not be doing x and y, just do it with this app (which is completely inferior)"

Next, windows does everything I want it to do, I disabled and uninstalled everything I didn't want easily through settings & group policy, and it hasn't bothered me since.

I'd actually argue enterprise is more likely for people to switch, there's a lot of Linux sysadmins out there, and there's a lot of Linux in enterprise environments, and of course especially servers.

Unless you have specific requirements for specific software that runs only on Windows, getting away from Microsoft can be a pretty tempting prospect. Even if there are people who fear change and the idea of change like the plague.

Sleep/hibernate has been a pretty big problem for a while. As for the gpu, have you checked out NixOS? There's ways to enforce your integrated card to handle everything and change states for certain apps to the discreet card.

It takes a bit to learn, but nixlang is pretty simple. I've heard it referred to as "JSON with functions". It also has the largest package repository of any OS and is atomic, so its hard as hell to break. You can even make separate, containerized dev environments with flakes.

Yeah Linux is great, no doubt. I've been using Xubuntu since forever, never really touched Arch, but fundamentally if you know your way around one system, you'll manage another.

Still, there are a bunch of applications that I must run under Windows, so it's good to have the no frills version available for that.

Yeah I should switch to Ventoy.

I mean, if whole EU countries can do it, so can you.

I dual booth Win11 and Fedora Desk 42. It feels gross starting windows but there are 2, TWO! Apps that don't have Linux version that I still need.

When Linux wizards figure out a way to use win apps without the intimidating complexity of installing Wine or virtualization, more people will switch.

I think at this point Android is the king of operating systems in terms of what the majority of consumer devices run. Perhaps the path forward is people plugging their phone into a dock and being presented with a more productive interface.

Where does one purchase a single license for windows 10 iot lts? Isn't that only for volume purchases by large enterprises?

intimidating complexity of installing Wine

I would give that a shot. The full guide is install 'wine' and 'winetricks' the same way you install any other software you use. Then in winetricks, select 'default prefix', then 'run arbitrary executable', and point it to your .exe installer. After that, you just open the program like any other program on your system.

You generally don't need to do more than that and might let you forgo ever dual booting again.

Two of my friends switched recently precisely because Win 10 was going end of life. 'I have to change the OS anyway' was the final motivator.

Most people are willing to buy new hardware, and nobody pays for a Windows key tbh.

Many people are also not willing to buy new hardware. I have several friends where each PC purchase is a massive hit on their budget that requires other things to be sacrificed. And one does pay for a Windows key every time they buy a Windows PC. SIs who sell PCs with Windows as optional offer the Linux PCs for cheaper since you don't have to pay the Windows license fee.

Even if they did it would be a free upgrade from 10 to 11.

Depends on the PC, some of them just will not go to 11, in which case you are talking about spending hundreds of dollars to go from Win 10 to Win 11, but $0 to go from Win 10 to Linux.

Enhanced Privacy

Once again not something people strictly care about.

Privacy is exactly what got me and one of my other friends to switch. Many, many people don't like being spied on. And taking reasonable steps to reduce it is very much so within our control.

The implication that carbon emissions is something an individual can do something about has been objectively disproven.

Not buying something new and using what you have demonstrably helps. There is no world in which throwing away a perfectly good PC just to manufacture and transport another is somehow better for carbon emissions. Microsoft should not be rewarded for creating so much unnecessary ewaste by encouraging people to go out and buy another Windows PC.

I might be a little behind on Windows releases, because this is the first time I've heard of a version 40320

I got a cheap mini pc. It had W11 on it which I promptly broke (I think it was when it insisted on me putting in a PIN but I closed the window). It also ran at 100% for no reason trying to do updates, but then refused to do any updates.

So I put the latest Ubuntu Linux on it. Seems OK, but I can't get anything to recognise the video codex stuff in the N150 CPU. It seems to know it's there, but Firefox and MPV won't use it...

I know when you install Mint there is a 'install codecs' checkbox during the installer, not sure if the same exists for Ubuntu.

For Ubuntu, you could try this and see if it solves your problem.